Logs:Seventeen
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| RL Date: 19 October, 2014 |
| Who: Lycinea |
| Involves: High Reaches Weyr |
| Type: Vignette |
| What: It's Lya's turnday! |
| Where: High Reaches Weyr |
| When: Day 13, Month 1, Turn 36 (Interval 10) |
| Mentions: Gamil/Mentions, Giorda/Mentions, Rh'mis/Mentions, Szarga/Mentions, V'ros/Mentions, Vesra/Mentions |
| OOC Notes: Slightly back-dated. |
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| Seventeen is a good number, she'd thought when she woke up. She didn't feel any different. Not older, not smarter, not prettier. Sigh. Aren't turndays supposed to mean something? She pushed the blankets back on her small bed in the residents' dorms and let her feet down onto the worn coiled rug that kept the stone from being quite so cold in the room she shared with seven other girls around her age. She remembered her fifteenth turnday. She 'graduated' from the littles' cavern, so much bigger than this one, and into this one. In some ways it was better, and in some worse. Fewer roommates, but these girls, as one might well imagine, were some of her favorite people. The first turn was the worst. She woke up to awful things sometimes, and sometimes she couldn't sleep for fear of them. Now, two turns later, the pranks had grown old and the girls not inventive enough to make ones better. Perhaps it was enough of a turnday present from them not to have a tunnelsnake in her pillowcase this morning. She'd check again before bed tonight. She thought about skipping her duties in the kitchen; she had a double-shift as punishment for -- something, she didn't remember what. People did that on their turnday, right? Played hooky? But those people probably had somewhere to go, something fun to do. She had only this, so she went. She mouthed off to Vesra and Gamil and the other cooks as usual. She wasn't quite fast enough to avoid the spoon that clipped the knuckles on the back of one hand when Vesra had had quite enough; they ached and were still aching when Giorda came in. "The Weyr is assisting." She'd said grimly to the quickly assembled staff. "There's a storm over Tillek. A bad one. We don't have time to worry. We'll need to be ready for them when they come back." That's what she said to all of them before she called the cooks and their assistants over to discuss the particulars. Lya was put to the kettles, to boil the water - water for klah, water for the wounded, water. It gave her too much time to think. Funny, that water would be used to help here when it was doing so much harm elsewhere. "Lya!" Vesra called her name, not for the first time, her tone sharp and annoyed but more urgent than usual. "Bring him a cup of klah and a fresh shirt." She instructed when the teen looked her way, indicating a drenched brownrider being shown to one of the nooks. He was pale, shivering and obviously shaken, mumbling to himself. "There's no way. So many. There are too many." A little more got out of of him as Lya stood uncertainly by. Vesra dropped a blanket into her arms, "Around his shoulders," was all the instruction she gave before heading off again. No one was still in these kitchens, not now. No one but Lya. She drew breath and stepped closer, carefully putting the blanket over him, as if he might crumple under it's weight. For all that, she nearly jumped out of her skin when he grabbed her hand, blue eyes boring into hers, "They're going to die." He said it desperately, as if by telling her she might somehow prevent it's happening. It laid the weight of the world on her shoulders. "I'm only seventeen," she wanted to tell him, helpless, but she couldn't. It seemed so stupid that this was all she could do. She couldn't do what he wanted of her, but couldn't she do something? Maybe the healers-- but then Vesra was back and shoving a load of dry shirts into her arms handing her a klah pitcher as well. "They're starting to arrive. Go." What was intended was obvious. She did what she could, handing out dry shirts, even after that imbecile made her drop them all. He wasn't even wet, or pale, or shivering. She didn't have time for him. This didn't feel like work, it felt like duty, and that was a strange thing to her, so foreign. She didn't like it. It wasn't duty that had her talking to V'ros, or duty that tried to get him better, but she thought maybe she could just do something to help someone and then she wouldn't be so useless. But it didn't work. He wouldn't -- maybe couldn't -- let her help him. She tried again after him, but it was harder with people she didn't know, harder because the caverns were so full. By the end of the night, she was exhausted, crawling into her bed, drawing the covers up over her drawn up knees and then over her head. She let herself cry. Seventeen hadn't seemed a weighty thing this morning. But now... now she felt like she'd let every chance she had to do something right slip her by. Was her life already over at seventeen? Or was this her wake-up call? Did she even want to be woken? Did she have a choice? After the tears subsided, she lay her head on her pillow. It moved. "For Faranth's sake!" She shouted in anger, jumping out of the bed, one hand grabbing up the end of her pillow and stalking over to where girls were already sleeping. One by one she slammed them with that pillow, with its startled and writhing occupant inside. "You sharding nitwits! How could you! On a day like today?!" Did she mean her turnday? Did she mean on a day when disaster struck? On a day when tragedy hit the Weyr? She was so angry she was crying again, but it wasn't the same as under her blanket. The girls she'd woken were screaming, some of them crying too. One, the worst one, sniffled, her eyes red. "I'm sorry, I'm sorry!" she declared through the sobs. "It was before! Before-" any of it. Back when today was just another day to prank the weird girl. "If you ever do it again, I'll drag you between myself." Despite the impossibility of being able to carry out the threat, it left her old enemy quailing in her bed. Lya left the pillow there too. Let her deal with the 'snake. They deserved each other. She would find somewhere else to sleep. Happy turnday, she told herself as she walked off. Worst one yet. |
Comments
Edyis (00:14, 26 October 2014 (EDT)) said...
Poor Lya! What a terrible birthday. Nice job with the snake though.
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